


Irish Coffee

by tryceratops



Category: Captain America (Movies), Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Jessica Swears A Lot, vague allusions to kilgrave and all that jazz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 14:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14498679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryceratops/pseuds/tryceratops
Summary: Jessica runs into an incognito Cap at a cafe. They form an unlikely friendship of sorts.





	Irish Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> So I started writing this in early fall 2015, before the first season of Jessica Jones came out. Because of that, a lot of this is based more in comics than the TV show, but it fits into the MCU for the most part. This is definitely pre-S1 of JJ. There may be more of this coming, I have a few ideas for these characters, but I couldn't make anything fit right now so we'll see. 
> 
> (Also hi I haven't posted anything here in literal years, so welcome back to me I guess!)

The first time they met was at a coffee shop.  It was a Saturday afternoon and the place was packed, so when Steve got his coffee (regular, black. He hadn’t quite yet figured out the technicalities of the new coffee craze), he found the only empty seat in the entire cafe and asked the girl sitting across from it if he could have it. She was wrapped in a black leather jacket with black hair just past her shoulders. Dark bags under her eyes were definitely noticeable under her pale skin.

She looked up from her phone, eying him over carefully, and then shrugged. “Go ahead.”

He smiled and nodded his thanks and sat down, unfolding the newspaper he’d tucked under his elbow at the register.

They sat in companionable silence for about half an hour, the girl periodically peering over her laptop screen to glance at him. He pretended not to notice.

Finally she snapped her laptop shut. “You look familiar.”

He looked at her over his paper. “Do I?”

“Yeah.” She frowned. “You go to the Ace?”

“The what?”

“Bar. Ace Bar. Just a couple blocks west of here?”

“No.”

“Damn, thought we might’ve hooked up.”

“Wouldn’t you remember that?”

She laughed. “With you, buddy, I’d hope I would. Knowing me, though? Doubtful.”

He raised his eyebrows and went back to his paper.

She stared at him for a few seconds more and then started packing her stuff away.

“Well, see you around.”

\------

He didn’t see her for another month, didn’t even think of her as anything other than the girl who almost recognized him as Captain America (there were lots of those though), until he went back to the same café one rainy Sunday. She was standing outside smoking a cigarette and looking even worse for wear than the last time he’d seen her. He smiled at her as he stepped inside, ordering his coffee and grabbing a table in the back corner. He’d brought a book of crossword puzzles this time. The café was almost deserted, unlike the last time he’d seen her, so he was surprised when she brought her cup of coffee over to his table.

“This seat taken?”

He looked up at her and then shook his head. She sat down and peered over at his book. “Jungly.” She said finally.

“Huh?”

“Five down. Six letter word for overgrown starting with J? Jungly.”

He glanced down at the clue and then at the space and penciled it in. “Thanks.”

She shrugged. “No problem.”

He looked up at her for a moment and then folded his book closed, leaving his pencil to hold his place.

“I’m Steve.” He offered her his hand.

She stared at the offered hand for a minute, sipping her coffee, and then set down her cup and took it. “Jessica.”

Her fingers were ice cold even despite the fact she had just been holding a warm cup of coffee. He ignored it though and smiled at her, giving her a firm handshake. “Nice to meet you, Jessica.”

“You too, Steve.” She withdrew her hand and picked up her cup again. He noticed her nails were bitten to the quick, the tell-tale yellow staining around her fingers showing that she was a regular smoker.

“What’re you drinking?” His attempt at small talk.

“Americano. Extra espresso.”

He gave her a confused look.

“Espresso and water, extra espresso.” She sipped again, “Second best thing to alcohol.”

He nodded as if he understood. “I’m trying to cut back.” She continued. “On drinking. Alcohol.” She sighed and sipped her Americano. “Fucking sucks.”

“Oh. Well… good luck?”

“I’ll need it.” She tapped her fingers against the table. “Going to smoke myself to death if I can’t drink myself there first.” She laughed. He forced a smile, not understanding the humour. She must have caught on because she gave him an awkward smile. “Sorry.” She waved one hand around, “Just been…. A rough…”

“Week?” He offered. She laughed, hard.

“Life.”

He forced another weak smile.

“Sorry.” She sighed, “I’m not really good with this whole small talk thing. Don’t even know why I came over here, really. Should’ve left you to your puzzles.”

“I don’t mind.” He rushed to reassure her. “It’s… nice. I’m… I’m kind of new to town, meeting people isn’t really easy.”

“Oh yeah? Where you from?”

He hesitated. “Well, Brooklyn originally, but I’ve been away for… quite a few years. Moving around a lot. Just got back a few months ago.”

“And you’ve decided to make the rat infested shithole of Manhattan your new home?”

He smiled, appreciating her crass language in some way. “I’d like to get back to Brooklyn, but my, uh, boss wanted me in Manhattan.”

She nodded. “Working for The Man. I get it.”

He cocked his head. “I couldn’t do that shit.” She sipped her coffee, “Self-employed is the way to be.”

“What do you do?”

“Whatever I can get paid to do.” She laughed, signaling that it was a joke. “I’m a private investigator, mostly.” He nodded his understanding. “You?” She asked.

“Ah, I work for the Government.”

“Wow you really do work for The Man.” She laughed again.

“I guess?”

“Big Brother treating you well?”

“Can’t really complain.”

“Good.”

They fell into a silence for a couple minutes. It was just on the verge of being awkward when she spoke up again, having finished her drink. “Well, I need another smoke so I’m going to head out.” She stood up and fished around her pockets and then pulled out a business card. “If you ever have a cheating girlfriend, you know where to find me.” She set the card down in front of him and smiled before turning and walking out.

He picked up the card and examined it. Alias Investigations.

\-----

She was there the next Sunday, and the Sunday after that. It became a sort of weekly ritual. He’d come in, order his coffee, and sit and wait for Jessica to come join him. They’d make small talk, discuss the weather, politics, construction. Never anything really deep, but he grew to appreciate the sense of companionship that having her around gave him. Their coffee together was something to look forward to.

About two months into their regular meetings she came in one Sunday looking particularly ragged. She sat down with her four-shot Americano, groaned, fished around in her purse and pulled out a flask, which she promptly started pouring in to her drink.

Steve looked around to make sure no one was watching and then looked back at Jessica. “I thought you were cutting back.”

“Cutting back, yeah, not stopping entirely. I’m not an animal.” She took a sip and winced. “Girl’s got needs and those needs sometimes include whiskey.”

He didn’t think he knew her well enough yet to feel comfortable commenting on how she might have a problem if she was drinking at noon on a Sunday. So he kept quiet and took a sip of his own coffee.

“Anything wrong?”

“Everything.” She somehow made the word sound more like a grunt than a word. “Spent half of last night chasing down a client who thought he’d try to skip out on his bill and then the other half of the night listening to his wife scream at both of us for wasting her money to prove she wasn’t having an affair. Some people really do just go to yoga six nights a week. Crazy fuckers.” She shook her head and took a long sip of her spiked coffee.

He let the silence sit for a moment, not sure if she was going to continue. She did. “And so then the fucker tries to punch me and scare me out, which, if you’ve been in my business for more than two seconds you know how to handle, so then the little jackass cuts me a cheque, right? And I know that kind of client, he’s going to try and pull a fast one on me, but it’s two AM on a Sunday, no one’s going to be around to cash it so now I’m here with what I know is a bad cheque but I have to at least try it on Monday to get the bastard to pay me cash and my rent is also due on Monday so I have to get him to pay me the same day I confront him about giving me a bad cheque and get it all done before five that evening.” She took another sip. “Fucking sketchy bastard, knew I shouldn’t have taken that job.”

She fell silent again, nursing her coffee.

“Sounds… tense.”

She looked up at him and nodded.

“And dangerous.” He frowned, “do you have any backup when you go into those kinds of situations?”

She laughed. “Backup?”

“Yeah, someone to watch your back when they try to throw a punch or whatever.”

“I’ve been doing this for long enough now, I can take a punch. If they ever land them, which they don’t, because I’m not a fucking idiot.”

“Still…”

“I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself.”

He shut up at that. He may not have spoken with a lot of women in his time, but he knew better than to make one angry. Especially one he almost wanted to call a friend.

“How was your week?” She asked after a couple minutes of silence.

“Oh, you know, same old…” He shrugged.

“Top secret government shit. Got it.” She mimed zipping her lips and then laughed, taking a long drink from her coffee.

Steve was about to ask her more about her job when his phone started beeping. It took him a second to realize what it was, and then another couple seconds to locate it in his pocket. It was only a text, but an urgent one. From Fury himself.

“Ah, I have to go.” He looked at her apologetically.

“No worries.” She waved him off. “Go do you.” She smiled.

“Thanks…” He stood and pulled his jacket on and then hesitated before looking over at her. “Hey, Jessica? Take care of yourself.”

“Got it, mom.” She gave him a mock salute. He laughed and walked out.

\-----

The next two weeks she didn’t show up at the café and as he started to get worried he considered calling her work. He still had her business card in his wallet. But he thought that might be weird, so he went with the other piece of information he had on her. The Ace bar. It was a shady place, though knowing what he knew of Jessica that didn’t particularly surprise him anymore. The floors were rough wood and the tables just pieces of plywood drilled onto table stands and an eclectic selection of chairs. He slid up to the bar, taking a seat at a barstool and looked around, seeing no sign of Jessica. As the bartender approached he ordered himself a pint and when the bartender returned he slid over a twenty.

“Keep the change if you answer a question for me?”

The bartender, a buff guy with tattoos and a bushy beard, looked down at the twenty. “Depends on the question.”

“Jessica Jones, do you know her?”

The bartender laughed. “Who’s asking?”

“I’m a friend of hers, haven’t heard from her in a couple weeks is all.”

The man looked him over carefully. “She was in on Wednesday, two days ago. Got wasted, started a fight, had to kick her out. She knocked Jim over there something good.” He pointed over to a man even larger than the bartender with a black eye sitting on the other end of the bar. “Haven’t seen her since.”

Steve nodded. “Thanks.”

“If you see her, tell her she still owes me for the table she broke.”

“She broke a table?”

“Shoved Jim over there clean through it.”

Steve frowned. She was a tiny girl. Then again, he knew better than most how many people would underestimate the little guy in a fight.

“Well, thanks.” He nodded at the bartender. “If you see her, can you tell her Steve wants to make sure she’s okay?”

\-----

After she didn’t show up for the third Sunday in a row, Steve made a habit of hanging around the Ace Bar in the evenings, hoping to catch sight of her.

It was Thursday evening, almost a month since he’d last seen her, and he was running late to get to the bar. Tony had been petulant and insisted on taking Steve out for a “guy’s night” together and it had run until after 1am. So Steve was in a bit of a hurry on his way to the Ace Bar, which seemed especially noisy from outside as he approached. Once he got inside he realized why.

Jessica appeared to be in a fight. A guy easily twice her size was throwing punches at her and a circle had formed around the two of them, locking her in. People appeared to be placing bets, he only half noticed, as he started to shove through the crowd. He didn’t care what she said, she was in danger from that guy.

Or at least that was what he thought until she dodged a punch, grabbed his arm, and threw him. Straight up threw the man. The crowd managed to part in time to avoid being hit by the flying body, and the man hit the wall with an audible ‘thud’.

The bar was dead silent after that for a solid thirty seconds as Jessica sauntered over to the bar and ordered a shot of whisky as if she hadn’t just thrown a three hundred pound man clear across the room. Slowly noise began to filter back in as people began exchanging money in their bets.

“Didn’t even break anything tonight.” She said with a shiteating grin to the bartender.

“You keep getting into fights in my bar and I’m going to have to ban you permanently, you know, Jones.”

She shrugged. “You bet on me, that’s going to double your profits tonight.”

He shook his head and poured her a shot, leaving the bottle next to her. She downed the shot and immediately poured herself another. And then another.

Steve frowned and walked over to her, taking a seat on a stool next to her. She looked over at him and rolled her eyes, pouring herself another shot.

“Steve.” Her tone was incredibly cool.

“…Did I do something wrong?” He was definitely confused.

“You could say that.” She slurred as she downed the shot and started pouring another when he grabbed the bottle from her.

“I think you’ve had enough.”

“Fuck you, you don’t know shit about me.”

“I know you just threw a man twice your size clear across the room without even trying.”

She glared at him and reached for the bottle, but he moved it out of her reach.

“The power of whisky is an amazing thing.”

“I don’t think whisky did that.”

“Pilates, then.”

“Jessica, what aren’t you telling me?”

She laughed. Loud.

“Oh, that is rich, coming from you, _captain_.”

Well shit.

“Is that why you stopped coming to the café?”

“I don’t do superheroes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I want absofuckinglutely nothing to do with you.” She made another grab for the bottle and the pulled it farther away.

“How did you find out?”

“I’m a private investigator, it’s what I do.”

“So are you going to tell me how you threw that guy across the room?”

“Nope.” She popped the P, enunciating it very clearly considering how much she’d had to drink.

“I was worried about you.”

“Good for you. I don’t care.”

“Bad experience?”

“With people like you?” She laughed. “Something like that.”

He frowned. “There aren’t that many of….. us. Who was it?”

She laughed again. “Probably haven’t heard of them.” She shook her head. “Now give me my whisky back and leave me the fuck alone.”

“The last thing you need right now is another drink.”

“Y’r not my mother.”

“I’m your friend.”

“Friends tell each other who they are.”

“And who are you?”

“Jessica Jones.”

He waited expectantly. She didn’t give him any more information than that.

“You’re not leaving, are you?”

“I think you’ll need some help getting home.”

She laughed. “I’m fine.”

“You’re drunk.”

She shrugged.

“So if you’re, y’know…” She frowned, “You know Fury?”

“Huh?”

“Fury. Nicholas J?”

“I can’t really…”

She rolled her eyes. “Right, Big Brother. Well, if you do happen to know him, tell him that Jessica Jones says fuck you. Again.” She slid off her barstool and fumbled in her pockets, eventually withdrawing a pack of cigarettes. Steve stood as well. She started towards the exit and he followed. As soon as she was outside she pulled out a cigarette and fumbled with her lighter until she got it lit, after which she took a long drag.

“You’re not walking me home, Rogers.” She said as he followed her outside.

“You’re not going home alone.”

“Are you inviting yourself over to my place, captain?” Her words were slurring more now.

“No, I’m taking you to mine.”

She laughed. “I told you, I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“And I don’t want you dying in your sleep.”

“M’fine, I’m barely even drunk.”

He laughed. “Right, I’ve heard that one before.”

“You bring all the drunk girls home with you?”

It was Steve’s turn to roll his eyes now.

“We’re getting a cab.”

\-----

Jessica woke the next morning with a throbbing headache in a bedroom she didn’t recognize.  Just another… whatever day it was in the life of Jessica Fucking Jones.  She tried to piece together the events of the previous night but they were all a bit of a blur, nothing really standing out after she got to the bar. There might’ve been a fight? There was always a fight, who was she kidding.

She groaned and rolled over and found herself surprised to be fully dressed. Not a normal whatever-day-it-was in the life of Jessica Jones, then. She sat up and looked around. It was a sparsely decorated room, nothing on the walls, just a couple of nightstands, a closet door, and a dresser.

She stood up and took a minute to catch her balance. Once she was sure she wouldn’t fall over she opened up the only door in the room (aside from the closet) and peered out into the hallway. Finding no one out there she went on a quest for the kitchen. Actually, scratch that. Bathroom.

She tried the first door she found which thankfully was right. After the necessities she considered a shower but decided against it. She should probably figure out whose house she was in first.

And so she continued on until she found the kitchen, where a broad-shouldered blonde figure was standing over the stove.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” She muttered mostly to herself but it seemed that he heard her because he turned around.

“Good morning.”

“Why the fuck am I here?”

“You weren’t really be in a condition to be left alone last night…” He poured her a glass of water and held it out to her. She eyed it for a minute and then took it.

“What the fuck even happened?”

“You got into a fight, threw a guy twice your size clean across the bar, drank a lot, told me off, told me to tell Nick Fury, well, you get the picture.”

She took a sip of the water and then started to chug it down, not stopping until she was finished. She set the glass down on the counter closes to her and wiped her mouth on her wrist.

“So why is Captain America taking home a drunk, chain smoking chick who gets into bar fights? Doesn’t really seem to be on the up and up to me.”

“I’d like to think of us as friends.”

“I’m not friends with you cape-types.”

“I don’t wear a cape.”

“You’re the type that _would_ though.”

He sighed, figuring it was better not to argue. “Why not?”

“Because you’re all nothing but trouble.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the counter.

He sighed. “Look, I’m just looking for… a friend. As Steve.”

“I know how this works. You can’t be separated from your work. That’s—that’s not how it works.”

“You’ve dated a superhero before?”

She laughed. “Sure, let’s say that.”

“You’re not a very straightforward person, are you?”

“I try.”

Steve sighed. “Want coffee? Or hash browns? Or we could go out for breakfast…”

“I’m fine.” She shook her head, “I should probably go. To work?” She looked around, “Shit, what day is it?” She frowned and patted down her pockets, pulling out her pack of cigarettes and muttering under her breath. “Damnit, who does a girl have to fuck to get a cigarette around here?”

“There’s a store down the block…” Steve offered. “And it’s Friday.”

“Thanks.” She felt through her pockets, and once she was sure she had everything else she looked around. “I should get going.”

“Door’s that way.” He pointed opposite the way she came.

“Thanks. And… thanks. For letting me crash.”

“No problem.” He smiled. “See you on Sunday?”

“We’ll see.”


End file.
